Blog about Sherwood Smith Week
Aug. 11th, 2008 12:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerOkay, I’m doing this late, but I like Sherwood Smith’s books so better late than never. I’m not sure how much blogging this will help, given that a significant portion of my f-list already reads Sherwood Smith (I should friend more people. Hey, universe, friend me!) but I’ve been meaning to write more about her books anyway.
I’ve already reviewed Inda and The Fox, which are the first two books in a sprawling and epic quartet about pirates and war and a cast of thousands. I have trouble keeping track of them all.
Inda et al are very impressive books, but I prefer her stand-alones, which display excellent characterization against less convoluted plots and more convivial backgrounds.
The world-building is excellent. Crown Duel, which is probably Smith’s most famous book (and my favorite, although I like Senrid a lot) takes place in a country marginal to her other stories; yet the detail is rich. There’s a section where the main character, Meliara, has to buy proper clothes for court, and the young lady helping her gives a short, complete, fascinating overview of a thousand years of Remalnan history through the medium of clothing.
Every time I reread I find bits of character depth or world-building that I’d missed before. The world-building especially, because she has so many other books set in the same world that it’s cumulative, so you can go back to the earlier books and find all these neat connections, and it all hangs together like a tapestry.
Crown Duel has a prequel-thing that just came out, Smith’s newest book, A Stranger to Command. I’ve read it only when she posted it on the LJ group (a great thing about being a Sherwood Smith fan: she gives away more stories than anyone but the Shadow Unit people) but it was lovely there. It’s set in Marlovan Hess, like the Inda series and Senrid, which I mentioned earlier.
Senrid suffers from an overly rambling structure (I think Sherwood Smith works better with a strong editor) but it has great characters. My favorite is Kyale, one of the main characters, who is a horribly spoiled brat. She’s like the anti-Mary Sue; her flaws are enormous and exasperating (although she has endearing qualities, too; a sense of drama, the desire to be liked coupled with a crippling lack of social skills—she’s like a theater geek), and the narrative goes out of its way neither to excuse them nor condemn them.
One of the things I love about Sherwood Smith books is that there’s a sense of compassion for the characters—character X isn’t merely an obstacle for the heroine and nothing more; the characters are all people. They have plausible (if sometimes unpleasant) psychologies. The narrative is not going to ramble vindictively out of its way to punish anyone; if the unpleasant characters’ stories end badly, it’s a natural consequence of their behavior, not auctorial intervention.
These books take me to my happy place. I think one of the reasons I’m not fond of Inda—character problems aside—is that it’s a much harsher book than the others. They aren’t fluff, but they have an essentially positive view of human nature and the potential of humans to learn to behave in a civilized manner.
I’ve already reviewed Inda and The Fox, which are the first two books in a sprawling and epic quartet about pirates and war and a cast of thousands. I have trouble keeping track of them all.
Inda et al are very impressive books, but I prefer her stand-alones, which display excellent characterization against less convoluted plots and more convivial backgrounds.
The world-building is excellent. Crown Duel, which is probably Smith’s most famous book (and my favorite, although I like Senrid a lot) takes place in a country marginal to her other stories; yet the detail is rich. There’s a section where the main character, Meliara, has to buy proper clothes for court, and the young lady helping her gives a short, complete, fascinating overview of a thousand years of Remalnan history through the medium of clothing.
Every time I reread I find bits of character depth or world-building that I’d missed before. The world-building especially, because she has so many other books set in the same world that it’s cumulative, so you can go back to the earlier books and find all these neat connections, and it all hangs together like a tapestry.
Crown Duel has a prequel-thing that just came out, Smith’s newest book, A Stranger to Command. I’ve read it only when she posted it on the LJ group (a great thing about being a Sherwood Smith fan: she gives away more stories than anyone but the Shadow Unit people) but it was lovely there. It’s set in Marlovan Hess, like the Inda series and Senrid, which I mentioned earlier.
Senrid suffers from an overly rambling structure (I think Sherwood Smith works better with a strong editor) but it has great characters. My favorite is Kyale, one of the main characters, who is a horribly spoiled brat. She’s like the anti-Mary Sue; her flaws are enormous and exasperating (although she has endearing qualities, too; a sense of drama, the desire to be liked coupled with a crippling lack of social skills—she’s like a theater geek), and the narrative goes out of its way neither to excuse them nor condemn them.
One of the things I love about Sherwood Smith books is that there’s a sense of compassion for the characters—character X isn’t merely an obstacle for the heroine and nothing more; the characters are all people. They have plausible (if sometimes unpleasant) psychologies. The narrative is not going to ramble vindictively out of its way to punish anyone; if the unpleasant characters’ stories end badly, it’s a natural consequence of their behavior, not auctorial intervention.
These books take me to my happy place. I think one of the reasons I’m not fond of Inda—character problems aside—is that it’s a much harsher book than the others. They aren’t fluff, but they have an essentially positive view of human nature and the potential of humans to learn to behave in a civilized manner.
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Date: 2008-08-12 04:13 am (UTC)I think you'll like Crown Duel a lot. The others are a bit more of a toss-up.